Aug 25, 2023
“Learn a trade” is the new “learn to code” — the latest iteration of the familiar admonishment to augment skills, directed at those struggling with underemployment and the high cost of living.
But this suggestion is now drawing closer scrutiny and backlash online. TikTok user P (@socialist-mac-miller) recently uploaded a video expressing his frustration with the upskilling crowd.
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“Nine times out of 10, when you see someone over the age of 25 waiting tables or working at a drive-through … it’s not because they’re lazy or unskilled,” he says. More likely, he says, the older person working a minimum wage job is overqualified for the role.
P offers up the example of his friend, who he claims has master’s degrees in biochemistry and mechanical engineering. “You know what they’re doing right now? They’re a store manager at a [Walgreens].”
He believes the “learn a trade crowd” refuses to accept that “what you all refer to as unskilled labor makes up 82% of the entire workforce in the United States.”
He doesn’t offer a source for this statistic, the Brookings Institution reported in 2020 that among the 53 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 who earn low wages — 44% of the entire workforce — the median hourly wage was $10.22 and their median annual income was $24,000. To put that into context, at the time, Brookings said that was more than twice the number of people in the 10 most populous U.S. cities combined.
Regardless, P’s key argument seems to be backed up by some experts and economists.
Rethinking ‘unskilled’
Coined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the term “unskilled labor” is commonly defined as any work that doesn’t require formal training or advanced educational credentials. This definition doesn’t account for the fact that many of these roles require intensive physical labor or special interpersonal skills. That being said, many view the term as outdated and prefer “low-wage workers” to refer to this cohort.
As P points out in his TikTok rant, many low-wage roles were labeled “essential” during the pandemic. And while that came with its share of difficulties, the rest were often left scrambling for work.
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Brookings found in 2021 that the COVID-19 pandemic had a disproportionately negative impact on low-wage workers: although they had only accounted for 43% of the labor force, they represented 52% of those “displaced” by the pandemic. And many had already been in a precarious financial position as it was.
With this in mind, some have tried to shift the debate away from improving skills and toward improving wages.
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The push for a livable wage
The Brookings 2020 report put the median hourly wage for low-wage workers at $10.22, while their median annual income was $24,000.
Overall, wages have barely kept up with the cost of living for several decades. The average earnings for an American worker, adjusted for inflation, are up only 4.4% since 2005, according to the BLS.
This despite the fact that Americans are, on average, more educated now. The percentage of U.S. adults aged 25 to 54 who have college degrees jumped from 38% in 2009 to 53.7% in 2021, according to a report from the Lumina Foundation. So much for the idea that Americans are failing to upskill.
With such a large segment of society earning low wages and a larger segment seeing barely any wage growth, some have argued that corporations and government agencies need to push for a “livable wage.”
“Every single job should pay a livable wage,” says P. “If you disagree with that, you are pretty much agreeing that our current system cannot function without people being kept in poverty.”
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Vishesh Raisinghani is a financial journalist covering personal finance, investing and the global economy. He's also the founder of Sharpe Ascension Inc., a content marketing agency focused on investment firms. His work has appeared in Moneywise, Yahoo Finance!, Motley Fool, Seeking Alpha, Mergers & Acquisitions Magazine and Piggybank.
